The heart of a computer is a magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) which typically includes a rotating magnetic disk, a slider that has read and write heads, a suspension arm above the rotating disk and an actuator arm that swings the suspension arm to place the read and/or write heads over selected circular tracks on the rotating disk. The suspension arm biases the slider into contact with the surface of the disk when the disk is not rotating but, when the disk rotates, air is swirled by the rotating disk adjacent an air bearing surface (ABS) of the slider causing the slider to ride on an air bearing a slight distance from the surface of the rotating disk. When the slider rides on the air bearing the write and read heads are employed for writing magnetic impressions to and reading magnetic signal fields from the rotating disk. The read and write heads are connected to processing circuitry that operates according to a computer program to implement the writing and reading functions.
The volume of information processing in the information age is increasing rapidly. In particular, it is desired that HDDs be able to store more information in their limited area and volume. A technical approach to this desire is to increase the capacity by increasing the recording density of the HDD. To achieve higher recording density, further miniaturization of recording bits is effective, which in turn typically requires the design of smaller and smaller components.
The further miniaturization of the various components, however, presents its own set of challenges and obstacles. Particularly, the miniaturization of read sensors in conventional products is limited by the processes currently used to form such components. The large sensor structures found in conventional products have several detrimental effects to their performance; one of which includes overlapping of adjacent tracks while reading, thereby introducing noise and signal distortion. Additionally, the tall profile of conventional products results in undesirably long transition times while reading data.
However, in sharp contrast, various embodiments described and/or suggested herein include an improved sensor structure and methods of forming such sensor structures. Particularly, the sensor structures described below may implement a reduced width, narrower cross-sectional profile and more vertical sidewalls, thereby resulting in drastic improvements over the performance limitations of conventional products described immediately above.